Gursky and his jogging path

Art & Design

The german photographer Andreas Gursky known by his gigantic images of man-made spaces such as
stock-exchanges, buildings and mega cities uses a large format
camera to show his view of the modern life, the globalization and the
information age. He manipulates and collages small shots to create
infinite vistas.

chicago board of trade

Flat, dull and linear but also
monumental, stunning and very expensive photos of Gursky are sold at
art auction houses all over the world. Studied under Beckers who
objectified and classified their subjects; Gursky also seems to stay
away from his subjects where individuals are tiny and insignificant. He seems to be looking moments where reality corresponds to the
composition, but if he can not find this reality up his own standards,
he creates them.

rimini

kuwait stock exchange

He shot his most famous and favorite
photo “rhein II, 1999” in 1996 along the Rhine which was his
jogging path in Dusseldorf. This ordinary picture was only ready to
be captured when lots of things like the light, the direction of the
wind and even the water level were just right; but still it was not
the image that he had in mind. He digitally reworked the photo
and removed some concrete buildings from the other side of the river.

The minimal abstract photo depicts the
contrast among the horizontal band of the colors which reminds me Josef
Albers free studies of colors for how much, how often and where, the
texture in the green grass, the shimmering degree of the water, the
matte surface of the path and the smeary appearance of the very light
blue gray sky. Motifs, patterns and textures tell only part of the Gursky's visual story; the rest of the allegory is hidden in the complexities and
multi layered nature of the realities seen by Gursky and interpreted
by his viewers.

Gursky talks about this image in terms of its contemporaneity, saying,‘I
wasn’t interested in an unusual, possibly picturesque view of the
Rhine, but in the most contemporary possible view of it.
Paradoxically, this view of the Rhine cannot be obtained in situ; a
fictitious construction was required to provide an accurate image of
a modern river’.